There’s no disputing that Glenn Close‘s snippy and snarly performance as “Mamaw” in Ron Howard‘s Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix, 11.11) will snag a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. It’ll happen. Definitely. And for three reasons.

One, because the conviction she brings to her character, the brillo-haired grandmother of main protagonist J.D. Vance — the real-life author of the 2016 book that the film is based upon, and who’s played as a young adult by Gabriel Basso and as a pudgy teenager by Owen Asztalos — feels raw and real.

Two, because “Mamaw” is pretty much the hero of the film — the blunt-spoken, tough-love butch boss who saves Vance from the horrific influence of his angry, drug-dependent mom (Amy Adams).

And three, because Close is now oh-for-seven in terms of Oscar wins (her first nomination happened 37 years ago for her Jenny performance in The World According to Garp), and everyone knows this narrative can’t be left hanging in the air.

As for the film itself, well…it’s well-crafted. And earnest. It has some good portions, some decent currents. If you’re fair-minded enough to ease up and cut it a little slack, you could give Hillbilly Elegy a passing grade. I certainly didn’t come away from it saying, “well, that stunk!” I came away saying “okay, it may not be a personal top-tenner, but it is what it is and does what it sets out to do.”

Several weeks ago I began hearing that Hillbilly Elegy was a problem, but when I finally saw it I couldn’t help but say “okay, it has issues and Adams’ downswirling mom is a terrible person to hang with, but the story is the story — how J.D. escaped from Southern Ohio and learned to walk his own path despite a dysfunctional family upbringing and dispiriting cultural influences…so at the end of the day it’s not that bad, or not by my standards.”

The other day I called it a “familiar-feeling people movie” — a personal-struggle thing that lets the audience know right away that things will work out for poor J.D. How do we know this? Because of Hans Zimmer and David Fleming‘s score. It tells you “this movie is going to behave in a certain way…it’s going to observe certain boundaries and deliver certain emotional satisfactions.” And that it does.

Said satisfactions are also rooted in the mellowish story-telling instincts of director Ron Howard. His films have always had a considerate, carefully measured quality. Despite the Hammer horror current generated by Adams’ Beverly Vance character (which drives and occupies most of the narrative) Hillbilly Elegy ends up in a place of assurance and stability.

I can’t think of anything more to say, to be honest. I’ll add to this if something comes to mind.

If there’s been one steady-drumbeat message that has thundered across the Twitterverse for several weeks now, it’s that Pete Docter‘s Soul (Disney, 12.25) is a truly exceptional animated feature…a half-emotional, half-philosophical, jazz-embroidered film so rich and resonant and full-hearted that it deserves to be in Best Picture contention. (Which of course will never happen as far as the Academy is concerned because, being animated, it belongs in Best Animated Feature contention.)

And then along comes Variety‘s award-season handicapper, a guy more or less required to not dwell on negative currents (that’s Owen Gleiberman or Peter Debruge‘s job, if and when the situation warrants) and to celebrate the celebrational and be as turn-the-other-cheeky as possible…along comes Clayton Davis with the first significant anti-Soul opinion to come down the pike.

Davis tweeted this morning that as much as he “wanted to love it”, he was unable to. Because “there’s a disconnect between story and character“, and because it feels like an Inside Out ripoff that doesn’t quite land where it’s supposed to.”

Clea DuVall‘s Happiest Season (Hulu, 11.25) seems cheery and harmless enough, but a gay couple hiding the truth from their parents and in-laws seems kinda Birdcage-y…no? I don’t know why exactly but the trailer also vaguely reminds me of the tone of Frank Oz‘s In & Out.

It’s okay to rework or refresh a certain kind of comic situation (the script was written by DuVall and Mary Holland) that was first explored nearly a quarter-century ago. You can always make a familiar idea feel like something new if you do it well enough, I suppose. It’s just that certain kinds of family comedies work best when they hit at exactly the right cultural moment, which is to say slightly ahead of the curve.

The ever-fickle Tatiana had never seen Roman Polanski‘s Repulsion, so we watched it the night before last. It was like seeing it for the first time in a way as she was hooked from the start, despite the increasingly unsettled jagged-edge quality.

For like all great films, Repulsion isn’t so much about the destination as the ride…about a brilliant, increasingly disturbing blend of sharp observational details of mid ’60s Londön + Catherine Deneuve‘s blond hair and vacant eyes + an acute dread of sexuality + a gathering psychosis leading to a psychological meltdown (ticking clock, rape nightmares, cracks in a wall, a punctured cuticle, a rotting rabbit, arms pushing through walls, two male victims).

Shot in Löndon’s South Kensington district and at Twickenham Studios in the summer or early fall of ’64, Repulsion premiered at Cannes ’65 and opened stateside in late ’65 and early ’66.

Polanski has always been a highly exacting and demanding director, but because of Repulsion‘s extra-scrimpy budget (65,000 British pounds or roughly 1.5 million pounds today) he regards it as his “shoddiest” film, and the special effects as “sloppy.” And yet everyone regards Repulsion as a pantheon effort. It still holds me every time.

For whatever reason I’d never watched the making-of doc, David Gregory‘s A British Horror Film (’03), but I finally did on Saturday. A candid, penetrating, wholly fascinating look at a landmark slasher flick, the doc was featured on the Criterion Bluray, which popped on 7.28.09.

Small quibble: The world has confirmed over and over that Repulsion was projected in 1.66, and yet the Criterion web page says the aspect ratio is 1.85.

Polanski quote at the very beginning: “You can [interpret the film] as you want — it’s a free country. But don’t ask me to explain any of my pictures.”

Mitch McConnell is going along with Trump’s theatrical refusal to accept Biden’s electoral victory, which is basically a show for the cult. McConnell isn’t stupid. He knows there’s nothing of substance to look into, but is saying nonetheless that Trump is entitled to humiliate himself and look like an obstinate fool.

With 97% of the Arizona votes counted, Joe Biden is only 15,000 votes ahead of Donald Trump — 1,645,000 vs. 1,630,339. It’s possible, I suppose, that Trump will very slightly nudge ahead as the last 3% is counted. Georgia is even tighter with Biden ahead of Trump by only 11K votes — 2,467,870 (49.5%) vs. 2,456,275 (49.3%). It won’t actually matter, of course, if Biden loses both states. I doubt that he will. Okay, maybe Arizona but not Georgia.

I was a Cub Scout but never a Boy Scout…no thanks! Even in my tweener years I had vaguely sensed that the BSA was a kind of Hitler Youth for middle-class, white-picket-fence American values and autocratic paternalism. Old-fashioned judgments, tough requirements, strict regimentation.

I didn’t have the sharpness of mind or powers of articulation that I have now, but even when I was ten I’d come to suspect that the BSA didn’t get the American bop-shoo-wop thing — an idea that the viewpoints and lifestyles of kids and parents who weren’t rigid straight-arrow types and who were open to a slightly less conventional or even a more subversive approach to American life could be afforded a certain lattitude and respect.

Things have changed, to put it mildly. The last time I checked the Boy Scouts of America had filed for bankruptcy protection after being hit by a deluge of sexual assault lawsuits. Because, according to evidence, adult Scoutmasters had apparently been fiddling around in the manner of Catholic priests.

And now I’m reading that the BSA’s opposite number, the Girl Scouts of the USA, has gone full woke in terms of gender identity issues.

The institutional instinct is obviously to protect girls or girl-identified youths from any kind of negative social climate, and that’s obviously a good thing. Why, then, am I detecting the same kind of Hitler Youth mindset that I sensed decades ago, only this time by way of a whiff of forced woke regimentation?

I’m guessing or presuming that a significant portion of those who didn’t vote for Biden-Harris on 11.3 feel a bit unsettled about wokester mandates, and that this is the kind of thing they felt (however ignorantly) they were voting against.

It was reported three and a half years ago that Boy Scouts would allow transgender children into programs — cool. And I’ve just come upon GSA guidelines for respecting and accepting gender non-conforming, gender creative or non-binary norms, and which apparently have been recently announced.

It follows that what’s good for the goose is presumably good for the gander, and so there should be, I gather, a corresponding policy endorsed by the Boy Scouts of America. Meaning that it would read like the GSA statement, but with adjustments:

“Our Boy Scout program is for any boy-identified youth, including cisgender boys and transgender boys. Each child and family is in charge of how they identify and their genders may change over time. For example, if a boy who has previously been a Boy Scout begins to identify as gender non-conforming, gender creative or non-binary, he/she will continue to be welcomed by the Boy Scouts of America.”

It’s not only unfair but vaguely repressive to mention this, I realize, but a certain question is hovering in the back of my mind — what would Fred MacMurray say?

In the wake of Pfizer’s announcement that their experimental COVID-19 vaccine (co-developed with the German drugmaker BioNTech) is 90% effective and will be distributed in early ’21, Donald Trump, Jr. has tweeted a suspicion that Pfizer deliberately withheld the good news so as not to benefit the Trump administration before the 11.3 election.

A consensus among certain reporters and Big Pharma sources is that Don Jr.’s theory is highly questionable if not rooted in out-and-out fantasy. And yet if (and I say “if”) it can be eventually proven or verified that Pfizer did hold back the news in order to benefit Biden-Harris…good! Smart chess move! Hollywood Elsewhere approves! Whoo-hoo!

President-elect Biden pledged last month that the vaccine (which requires a double dose for effectiveness) will be free to everyone. The U.S. has so far paid $1.95 billion for 100 million initial doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer expects to have up to 50 million doses available by the end of 2020. Hollywood Elsewhere expects to be double-dosed by January or February.

Excerpt from 11.9 N.Y. Times report:

“Wide distribution of Pfizer’s vaccine will be a logistical challenge. Because it is made with mRNA, the doses will need to be kept at ultra cold temperatures. While Pfizer has developed a special cooler to transport the vaccine, equipped with GPS-enabled thermal sensors, it remains unclear where people will receive the shots, and what role the government will play in distribution.

“Adding to the challenge, people will need to return three weeks later for a second dose to complete the immunization.

“Most experts say the world will need many treatments and vaccines to bring an end to the pandemic.”

In other words a double dose of the Pfizer vaccine isn’t expected to last more than a year or two…is that it? That in order to really vanquish Covid everyone will have to keep getting re-vaccinated for years on end?

From Owen Gleiberman‘s “The Melting Down of Donald Trump,” posted this morning: “Trump may still try to stage some sort of legal-electoral ‘coup,’ but to anyone tethered to the real world, his protests will increasingly sound like the face-saving whine of someone who can’t admit, or even compute, the prospect of his own defeat.

“On the deepest level, ‘The mail-in votes in Pennsylvania don’t count!’ is a fascist version of ‘The dog ate my homework!’ It’s Trump clinging to the presidency and trashing the rule of law, but mostly it’s Trump doing all he can to refuse his comeuppance, to deny that he’s now the loser he has spent his whole life running from being.

“[Classic villain comeuppance is] what happens, most spectacularly, in The Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West is destroyed before our eyes in a catharsis of long-finger-nailed rage. ‘Look what you’ve done!’ she screams. ‘I’m melting, melting!’ And then, with a touch of despair that can almost be called tragic, she says, ‘Oh, what a world, what a world’! She’s talking about a world that has taken away her power. She then crumples like a melted crayon, a humiliated mass of thwarted ambition.

“That’s what just happened to Donald Trump. He wasn’t simply defeated, given the boot by the American people. He got melted down. And that’s why he’ll never admit it. He’s holding the entire American democratic process hostage to prop up what’s left of his broken ego.

“There’s a lot of talk about how even though Trump lost, ‘Trumpism’ is here to stay. It will be standing on the sidelines, waiting in the wings, warming up for a comeback. But what does Donald Trump stand for, as a political figure, once you take away his power? He’ll be just another fulminating talk-radio host. And, of course, the cornerstone of his brand will now become the very notion that the presidency was stolen from him. He’ll make that the centerpiece of every rally, every Fox News appearance, every talk-radio hour he presides over.

“But it will all be Trump spinning his brokenness, licking his wounds. The Trump faithful, the true believers — the cult — will tune in. But I suspect that for most of America, Trump will simply sound like the sore loser he is. So let him spin away. It’s time to say goodnight to the bad guy.”

Dave Chappelle did a 16-minute standup routine at the start of last night’s SNL. And he smoked cigarettes all through it. For my money it was deep-down substantive on a Lenny Bruce level. Way more thoughtful and nutritious than the usual usual.

“Some people [in Ohio] make more money from stimulus checks than they do if they work, so a lot of people don’t wanna work. You know what that reminded me of? Ronald Reagan. What did Ronald Reagan say about black people? Welfare people, drug addicts…hoo, does that sound like now. Continue with the checks, the heroin. The rest of the country is tryin’ to move forward and these white bigots keep holdin’ us back.”

Herewith my favorite Russian dishes.

In first place are cheesecakes (syrniki), otherwise known as hot crisp with sour cream. This is one of three dishes that I know how to cook really well. My way of doing it is to roll them in peeled seed kernels and oatmeal before frying.

Cottage cheese in the United States is delicious, but completely unsuitable for cooking cheesecakes. You can buy the right kind of crumbly cottage cheese only in Russian stores. I will tell you about one of them below.

I’ve had a weakness for cottage cheese since childhood. Cottage cheese, sour cream and a little salt with a crust of fresh warm bread. This is what my parents and grandparents did in Moldova. By the way, if you put a warm crispy baguette in front of me, after five minutes only the pulp will remain on the table, and the crust will be gone. I remember as a child how my mother sent me to the grocery store for bread, milk, kefir; on the way back, almost all the crust was eaten. Aahh, my memories of Soviet grocer stores, and especially the bread department!

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